


Rewind and the Wolf-of-Foxes

by not_whelmed_yet



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Adventure & Romance, Alternate Universe - functionists are differently awful, Fairy Tale Style, Happy Ending, M/M, Rescue Missions, raised by wolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-01
Updated: 2018-02-01
Packaged: 2019-03-12 03:42:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13538955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/not_whelmed_yet/pseuds/not_whelmed_yet
Summary: What would it take for Rewind and Dominus Ambus to get a happy ending?In a world where Functionists do not suffer mechanimal or disposable sparklings, Dominus Ambus is separated from his spark brother and left to starve out on the plains surrounded the city. He is found and adopted by a pack of turbofoxes, who think him one of them.





	Rewind and the Wolf-of-Foxes

**Author's Note:**

> Very much not my usual style, but this was a fun experiment in how much you'd have to bend canon to give Rewind and Dominus a relationship where they were on equal footing and got a happy ending.
> 
> ...a lot. The answer to that is a lot.

Once upon a time there was a wolf that watched the plains. At nights he would climb to the surface and pace under the moonlight, looking for a thing he could not name.

In the language of his pack he was called Dominus, but we will call him Dom. The wolf, Dom, was not quite a wolf. He was the shape of a fox but far larger than any of the foxes of his pack. They had adopted him as a pup and he had grown to be their leader and fierce protector. But Dom knew there was something wrong with him and that secret was heavy on his spark.

And so, each night when the pack grew tired of foraging and fighting off the mindless beasts that crawled beneath the surface of the ground, when they hunkered down into a pile of tangled limbs and soft snuffling breaths, Dom would climb to the surface alone.

One night he stumbled across a glorious and miraculous thing—an open field of glowing souls. Dom had never seen such a glory with his own optics before. He walked that night amongst the warmth of the glowing sparks, humbled in their potential.

He returned the next night to the same place and found the sparkfield had been looted and left barren and dead.

Dom howled to see such a thing. But though it grieved him, he could not help returning to that ruined field night after night.

On the third night, a pair of figures approached out of the darkness and sent Dom darting for cover. They were Twolegs, the monsters that lurked at the ends of the plains, the creatures who hunted fox packs without mercy, who split the seams of the world open and guzzled the lifeblood within. They were the horrible secret Dom kept inside of him.

The Twolegs walked to the edge of the sparkfield and tossed something onto the jagged ground. Then they turned on their heels and walked back towards their vehicles, which carried them back to the gates of the city. Dom waited until their lights had vanished into the darkness before he approached the small and whimpering thing they had discarded.

It was a tiny Twolegs. So small, even as a protoform, that Dominus couldn't imagine it growing into a creature like the Twoleg soldiers who led the hunts. It had taken a small and boxy shape and, upon Dominus poking at him with his snout, folded itself into a protective little box with its arms and legs retracted. It shook in the cold night air.

So small. And so helpless. And those monsters had abandoned it to starve out in the plains, before it even settled into its frame pigments. Dominus growled in frustration but stopped when the poor thing shuddered all the more. He curled his body around the small creature and realized for the first time how _he_ must have ended up out in the plains for his pack to find and adopt as a pup.

One good turn deserved another. They would make this Twoleg their packmate as well.  


* * *

 

“He is not one of us!” His packmates protested. “He is one of _them_!”

“He is innocent and I will not leave him to die,” Dominus said.

“But he is one of them!” They cried.

Dominus set the protoform down and rose to his hindpaws. The transformation was slow and ragged, hidden so long. But he emerged with legs and hands and a face much like the protoform's. “So am I,” he said. “When you found me abandoned, you took me in. You taught me how to be one of you. We can do the same to him.”

The pack reared back in horror, and bickering started up amongst the packmates. But eventually Ellos, oldest of them all, growled for silence. “Dom is our pack leader. He kept this secret because he feared your prejudices. But the Twolegs are not evil of the spark—they spark just like us in fields as we do. They are sickened and poisoned by the evil of other Twolegs. We saved Dom from that fate. We will do the same with this pup.”

The weeks flew like days. The pup grew into his frame and his plating developed a warm rich coloration in black and grey and exotic red. His optic was a luminescent blue. He grew strong, able to keep up with the pack in their treks belowground. He was nimble and clever, sighting seams of lifeblood none had found before. He was playful and affectionate, joining in the play-fights and pack-sleeps.

And, while it took longer, he eventually learned to speak their language. He was curious as any fox, always sending the pack tracing their footsteps to show them some small marvel he had found. They named him Rewind for all the times he made them go back again. He bore the name with good humor.

And while his spark still ached sometimes for something he could not describe, Dom ceased going to the surface at night. Instead he curled with his pack and slept.

 

* * *

 

Years passed.

Rewind grew into himself and into his place in the pack. He became their navigator and historian, counting the paces of their subterranean tunnels to transform them into maps within his mind. Some of their company drifted to new packs, forged alliances. New pups were adopted and brought to adulthood. Bots split off in pairs and trines, sharing joyous cuddles and long walks together. The pairings shifted and changed throughout the years, always passing over Rewind and Dom. In response, they were pushed closer together, sharing long stretches of easy camaraderie.

One day, Rewind asked permission to court Dom. He laughed at Dom's shock, throwing his head back and clapping his hands together in joyous delight.

“But you are young!” Dom protested. “And I am old.”

“Oh, Dom,” Rewind said. “The years that passed before we met have long since been outnumbered by our decades together.”

“That can't be true,” Dom said. But, on reflection, Rewind was right. Counting the solar cycles since the pack had first taken him in...he'd been but a pup himself when they first took Rewind in. “I feel too old for a first love,” Dom admitted.

“Let me do the courting,” Rewind said, brushing his hand over the spines of Dom's ruff. “And we'll see if I can't sway your spark.”

The weeks that followed had Dom feeling like a newframe again. Courting turned out to be a great deal like play. Rewind took him exploring, all the nooks and crannies where beautiful pointless crystals shimmered on the walls of the caverns. They splashed through puddles together, rolled through the dust and rubbed foreheads. They raced over moonlight plains, Rewind clinging to his back with his face nestled in Dom's ruff.

They lay alone and breathless under the moon and let the silence overtake them. They leaned close during daily foraging and whispered little nothings in each other's audials. They spun a little world of their own out of the air and it was the first private thing Dom had ever had to himself. Something that belonged only to them and not to the pack.

The pack teased them for it, of course, but Dom knew they didn't disapprove. Their two odd ducklings, together at last.

“Promise you won't tell me 'I told you so'.”

Rewind chuckled and smoothed his hands over Dom's face, leaning their heads together. “I would never.”  


* * *

 

The years that followed flowed smooth. Dom had the pack and Rewind. He'd never dared imagine such happiness.

It wasn't perfect, of course. They were forced to move their territory when roving hunting parties strayed farther afield from the Twolegs's settlement. They clashed with the insectoid monsters that flew through the duststorms above ground. Perfect, stupid, brave Rewind nearly died after taking a spike to the chest trying to protect Dom in one such clash. He recovered slower than Dom would have liked. Of course, Dom would have liked him to recover instantly.

But all in all, looking back, it had flowed smooth. Their conflicts had been from without, not within.

One night Dom awoke and found Rewind not beside him. Unsure of where to look, he traveled up to the surface and found him there, sitting and watching the lights of the Twoleg settlement blinking on the horizon.

“I want to know why,” Rewind said. “I want to know why they abandoned me. Why they abandoned you. I want to understand.”

“The Twolegs are dangerous. I cannot lose you,” Dom said.

“I know,” Rewind said, but he clearly had not been dissuaded.

More and more, Dom found Rewind not at his side at night, found him topside watching the Twoleg settlement. And he knew he was losing him. Rewind had always been curious, too curious. He hungered for knowledge, for things Dom could not give him.

And so the night that Rewind left, Dom did not stop him.

He set his body between Rewind and the city and begged him to stay. But when Rewind, full of tearful determination, pulled him into a close embrace and promised to return, he did not stop him. When Rewind let him go and disappeared into the darkness, he did not stop him.

He did not stop him and that was his burden to carry.

For Rewind did not return.

 

* * *

 

The world was fogged and his senses seemed dulled by his sorrow and they foraged without aim or care. And it was in his grief that he allowed the pack to drift too close to the roving hunts.

The roar of the Twoleg hunters tore him from his distraction and the pack splintered, breaking apart and fleeing without sense. Dom fled, but one of the hunters kept right on his tail as he wound his way underground. At last Dom reached a bolthole small enough to evade his pursuer and leapt for it..

His pursuer fired a shot and the rock above the bolthole shattered, sending shrapnel flying and collapsing the entrance. The hunter and Dom both froze, then the hunter raised both his hands and spoke some soft word.

And then the armor of the hunter split in two and a small Twoleg stepped out from the inside. A tiny Twoleg, barely taller than Rewind! It wore a strange facial insignia that much resembled Dom's own, though it looked quite silly in the absence of his ruff.

The small Twoleg went to one knee and held out his hands, speaking urgently in his garbled language with his optics focused on Dom. What manner of Twoleg trickery was this? Dom growled in response and the bot threw his hands up in frustration.

The Twoleg drew a knife and Dom shrank back, but did not flee. The hunter nicked the fuel line of his own wrist and began to paint, fingers pink with fuel.

He painted a dot that grew to become a sparkling, and then a small bot. Then he surrounded that bot with an outline of huge battle armor. The hunter pointed to the bot in armor and then to himself.

Dom nodded his understanding and the small bot smiled. He returned to the small dot that had become a sparking and drew a second sparkling, a sharp line cutting the dot in half. This sparkling he grew into a awkward quadruped with a jagged mane and at last Dom recognized himself. He nosed at the line between the two sparklings and whined in confusion.

The bot continued to draw, tracing out a story that Dom had always half understood. A spark, or perhaps two sparks joined together, split to form two creatures. The one accepted and welcomed into society. The other, left to die in the wastes. But always with a pull on their sparks telling them that something was missing, something was out there.

Dom let his brother pull him into an embrace. Then he transformed into his Twoleg mode, always so awkward for its rarity. He bit into his own wrist to furnish himself with ink to draw. And he told his story, and Rewind's.

His drawings were clumsy and amateurish, but when he crossed out Rewind's figure after leading it to the settlement, his brother nodded in mournful understanding. He drew a sun and a moon and revolved his finger as if to ask, _how long_?

Dom did not know. He drew five dots and then ten and then more, filling the floor of the space between them with desperate energy until his brother grabbed his wrist to stop him.

“Please help me,” Dom said, though he knew his brother could not understand.

His brother bent his head forwards to meet Dom's. Then he touched his figure and then the settlement. Then both him and Rewind and brought both fingers back to Dom.

Dom touched the moon and sun and circled it in anxious question.

His brother made five dots on the ground and then pulled Dom into another embrace. Then he retreated into his battle suit and, with one last awkward wave, vanished.  


* * *

 

Dom's pack did not share his excitement, nor his trust.

“He is a hunter! He was raised by _them_ —”

“—who abandon sparklings—”

“—who kill for the joy of it—”

“—who have no pack and no loyalty.”

“You cannot trust him,” they told him.

“I have no one else to trust,” he said to them. “He is my only chance to find Rewind.”

But five days passed and his sparkbrother did not return. Those five became six and then ten and he did not return. The pack urged him to move deeper into the caverns, lest the hunters come back in force and slaughter then all. “One more day,” he said. “We will wait one more day for his return.”

And on the break of dawn of the final day, his sparkbrother again appeared in the cavern where they had parted. His face was lined with sorrow and Dom knew what the answer must be.

But his brother offered up a line of metal cabling, giving him hold of one end. Dom watched, mystified, as his brother inserted one end of the cabling into his helm, and then reached to do the same with Dom. The pack, retreated into the hideaways and narrow spaces of the cavern to watch, growled their distrust.

Dom put up his hand to quiet them. “He is of my spark and steel. He will not hurt me.”

His brother slipped the cable in and what a peculiar experience it was. It was as if the world had shifted to hold two minds and two overlapping sets of sights and sounds and smells and Dom laughed in wonder. Mind to mind. They were as one.

 _Your love has been captured by the god-king-emperor,_ his brother's voice spoke in his mind, the strangeness of his speech somehow resolving itself into the words of Dom's own. _For him to have survived disposal is considered heresy. He is to be executed._

 _How?_ Dom held out a hand for his brother to hold.

_They have caged him in the public square, where he will stay until he starves._

_I will save him._

_It is the god-king-emperor and he has all the armies of the people at his command. You cannot take them yourself._

_Brother, I am a wolf-of-foxes. I do nothing alone._

 

* * *

 

Minimus Ambus, guard of the outer wall, returned from his patrol several minutes late. His comrades took note of this only because Minimus was a punctilious bot, precise in all things but most especially his duty schedule. It was a moonless night, but the lights of the city shone brightly and they caught sight of him from a good ways off.

When he arrived, he was carrying with him a struggling grey bot, a tiny thing. An affront to the Prime. A weakling that ought have been left out to the wastes rather than be allowed to parasitize the city.

“I must take this thing to the cages,” he said.

His fellows waved him through the inner gates, not noticing the heaviness of his tread. Minimus Ambus turned abruptly off the main road once he was out of sight and proceeded to his home, where he disembarked from his outer armor. He and Dom let slip the foxes that had hidden within the empty spaces of the armor's legs and the pack headed down into the undergrid.

Waiting in the apartment was the armor of a giant, which Minimus had commissioned from a mad scientist and tinkerer and friend. The two brothers stepped into the chest of the giant side-by-side, one brother commanding the left side and one commanding the right. Their linked minds commanded the voice.

The giant stood and the wall of the building crumbled.

It stepped and the ground reverberated with a great booming sound.

It grinned a twin grin and rolled its hands into fists.

And then the great giant stormed the public square. Twenty guards lined the walls, which seemed a great many guards to guard the single tiny robot huddled in the center of the hanging cage. “Release my love or I will bring this city down around your heads!” The giant bellowed.

The guards quaked.

But they were not allowed to release prisoners, so they stood to fight the giant one by one. It swatted them away with careless ease and then knelt to tear the cage apart with enormous hands. In the words of the wolves, the giant said, “Rewind, my love, I have come to set you free.”

Rewind blinked up at them, frame grey and brittle and terribly weak. “Dom? What have you done to yourself?”

“We must go now,” he said.

And then the last guard, who had dragged himself back into the fight and taken up the fallen rifle of his comrade, leveled his gun and shot the giant between the eyes. The giant slumped and then crashed to the ground with a great noise that made the very buildings shake. And there it lay, dead to the world.

Rewind climbed out of the cage and placed himself on wobbling legs between himself and the giant, raising his fists as if to fight the guard—

When the lights went out.

All the lights. The darkness of the city was total and complete.

And in the darkness, a hand took his. “Do not be afraid, my love,” Dom said. And with one hand holding Rewind and the other leading Minimus, they slipped past the last guard under the cover of darkness. Dom's eyes as sharp in darkness as daylight and he found the first hatch into the undergrid and led them inside.

Rewind threw himself onto his love, running hands over his plating as if to find any trace of the injury that had downed the giant armor. Minimus offered Dom one of his rations for Rewind and stepped back to give the lovers space.

“I'm unhurt, Rewind,” Dome said. “The outer armor was always meant to be abandoned, though I had not imagined startling you so. Now, you must eat before the pack rejoins us and we make our escape.”

When the pack appeared, loping down the tunnel from their successful mission interrupting the power lines, Rewind was already steady enough to stand without Dominus steadying him. The pack leaped for joy and curled around their legs in barely contained delight.

But Rewind interrupted their reunion with urgent news—he had been captured when he'd discovered a horrible secret.

“The King has found a way to cheat life. They've created these souls and frozen them and the king keeps them hidden in a spaceship inside the castle. They were planning to use them to make more serfs and soldiers to serve the king.”

“And what would you have us do?” Dom asked.

“Steal the ship. Save the souls.”

 

* * *

 

Really, the most challenging part was operating the controls with a crew that contained three bots with thumbs and thirteen without.

And so, Rewind and Dom and Minimus and all of the rest of their family escaped into space with a glorious explosion that blew the roof off the palace's shuttle bay. Whereupon Rewind was properly introduced to Minimus and Minimus to Rewind with many happy tidings. And Rewind shared that he had downloaded the entire private library of the god-emperor-king and had word of an earlier society of Twolegs, great warriors who left the planet to share enlightenment with peoples throughout the galaxy.

“If anyone knows what to do with thirty thousand frozen children, it would be them,” Rewind said.

And so, the oddest family in all of Cybertron set out to find the greatest warriors in all its history.

And they lived happily ever after.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I love comments so...you know, feel free to tell me anything. You can also find me on tumblr at [ notwhelmedyet](http://notwhelmedyet.tumblr.com/), talking 'bout robots & being behind on lost light.


End file.
